Currents

Environmentalists analyzing governmental and independent soil test data from New Orleans are appalled that the government has allowed people to return, albeit briefly, to certain of the hardest hit neighborhoods in recent weeks. Erik Olson of the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) believes that government officials have been "grossly misleading the public" by not warning former inhabitants returning to collect belongings that their property may well still be contaminated by heavy metals and banned pesticides left behind after the hurricane-induced late summer flooding.

Conservationists working to save threatened mountain terrain in Borneo from the incursions of a proposed palm oil plantation have a new weapon in their arsenal. Recent photographs snapped by a camera trap set up in the mountains of Kayan Mentara National Park show a mysterious carnivorous mammal which biologists claim has not yet been documented by science. If the creature is indeed a new species to science, it would be the first such discovery of a new carnivore in Borneo in more than a century.

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced last week that the Commonwealth has joined a bloc of seven other U.S. states in attempts to force automakers to produce cars and trucks with less of the emissions that are exacerbating global warming and other pollution-related environmental ills. California moved first by proposing the stricter standards last year, but the automakers have challenged the constitutionality of that statewide initiative in the courts.

According to a report released last week by the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America (INGAA), a trade association representing gas pipeline companies, the impact of the recent harsh hurricane season on the Gulf coast may mean natural gas shortages in coming months, just as utilities and homeowners buckle down for a colder-than-expected winter.

As part of our overall strategy of reducing government to a size where it can be drowned in a bathtub (as our friend Grover Norquist puts it), we should take every opportunity to slash budgets in every agency, particularly the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service. One effective way to do that is to ask Congress for less money than the agencies want….

Two new reports released last week show that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are increasing and sea levels are rising more quickly than they have for thousands of years thanks to increased development around the world during the 20th century.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it has revised its procedures for assessing the fuel economy of vehicles with new standards that take into account updated technology, air conditioning use, faster driving, and increased traffic idling time. The agency’s testing standards–first introduced following the oil shocks of the 1970s–have not undergone any significant changes since 1985.

I’m sitting in an off-the-grid cabin in the red rock hills of New Mexico near where Georgia O’Keeffe used to live and paint, working by candlelight on my laptop run by solar-powered battery. Four weeks ago, I decided I would get away from my manicured suburban life–never mind the chinch bugs that have turned my green lawn into a scarred, weedy mess–and retreat into solitude and simplicity for inspiration. There’s a long line of writers who have done this: Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey, John Muir, Annie Dillard.

As part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit, chemical maker DuPont is paying for a medical survey checking the health of as many as 60,000 residents of the Ohio River Valley near its Washington, West Virginia Teflon plant. Environmentalists are worried that workers and others nearby may have been exposed to unhealthy amounts of the chemical ammonium perfluorooctanoate, also known as C8, which the company uses in the production of its non-stick Teflon coating.